the blog of Bishop Kenneth L. Carder

Main menu

Post navigation

Book on Its Way!

This week I sent the final draft of manuscript, Ministry with the Forgotten: Dementia through a Spiritual Lens, to Abingdon for the their review and editing. The book is the outgrowth of the journey Linda and I have been on for more than ten years.

Dementia is seen in our society almost exclusively through a medical lens where the focus is on symptoms, lost capacities, and grief. Such a narrow lens contributes to the current fear, stigmatizing, and marginalizing of people with dementia.

The book seeks to broaden the lens by locating dementia within God’s Story of creation, liberation, restoration, incarnation, and salvation. We are all more than our limitations, capacities, and losses. We are beloved children of God, created in the divine image, redeemed by God’s grace, and incorporated into a new community.

I am honored that the Foreword is written by Warren Kinghorn, a psychiatrist and theologian, who teaches in both the Medical School and Divinity School at Duke. His short Foreword is worth more than the book itself!

The book should be available by August. The royalties from its sale will go to support ministries with people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia and those who care for them.

I’m really looking forward to your book, Kenneth, as both of my parents had dementia. (My father is still living with the disease.) I’ve also considered writing a book myself along the same vein, but with the subject being bipolar disorder which I’ve been battling most of my life. The context is the same – it is a medical concern to most, yet has significant spiritual impacts. Thank you for addressing dementia in a way others don’t. Jenn Snyder

I was just at a Centering Prayer “Seekers Of Silence—SOS” support group here in Knoxville and talked with friends who are now doing “church work,” outside the church walls.

Jenny was ordained in the TVUU Church a few years ago as a deacon. She and a man friend have been doing Centering for about 20 years, as have I. Bob had a t-shirt making company. When a schizophrenic man was scaring people by hanging around the TVUUC, and scaring her, also, she realized that she couldn’t really help him and still do her church work.

Now, she and Bob run the t-shirt place, supporting themselves, in a different location not too far from downtown. That man now hangs around there, helping; he now gets disability and won’t need to shoplift any more, etc., has an account that allows him to draw only $10 – $15 a day, is more stable, etc. And there are others who hang around, help, may be high or having had too much to drink. But Jenny said that the relationship ships are what keeps them OK.

Thank you, Ken. I’m a Methodist PK and look forward to your blogs on this subject. And now, I’m looking forward to reading your new book and benefiting from its message in my current service as a Stephen Minister at CSUMC. My prayers continue to be with you and Linda.